"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

—Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa

The discovery Camus describes did not come during a comfortable season. It came in depth—in the difficulty, not before it. Self-will tends to treat winter as a problem to solve or survive, something to push through in order to reach better conditions. The idea that something might be found there rather than escaped from can feel counterintuitive.

What he calls invincible summer may not be optimism or resolution. It may be closer to a ground that doesn't depend on the weather—something present beneath the difficulty that the difficulty itself makes visible. Not because suffering is useful, but because the things we grip most tightly sometimes loosen only when the circumstances give us no choice.